Brian Walker – Page 69 – Slugger O'Toole

Finucane controversy won’t die down

Brian Walker on December 13, 2012, 12:02 pm

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Continuing demands for a “full independent international inquiry” into the murder of Pat Finucane are unlikely to be stilled to allow police and prosecuting authorities to consider what to. From their reactions yesterday we can be certain that unionist politicians will characterise the prominence given to the case as “one sided justice” and will heighten their demands for more aggressive action over IRA murders. Political division over the Finucane case has surfaced as we knew it would, further complicating any …

Finucane: facts we need to know updated

Brian Walker on December 12, 2012, 3:09 pm

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In the light of David Cameron’s statement, to keep my head above water in the flood of information and angry comment I itemise questions of fact I‘d like to keep sight of. Perhaps others can add to them. Update I intend to add to the list myself as I plough through the review and review comment. I’ll add convincing answers as they emerge. The Q&A will not all be about new material but will also include matters which deserve repetition …

SDLP old guard reject Newry party support for McCreesh playground

Brian Walker on December 12, 2012, 11:23 am

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Just a footnote on the flags exchanges from the Commons yesterday which suggests that the SDLP might have a flicker of independent life left in it when it appeals to old decencies. What we might call a creative split in the party occurred over the naming of the Patrick St playground in Newry after Raymond McCreesh which – my fault – I hadn’t noticed in local coverage before Mick’s pointed post. Irritatingly report after report simply lifted what reads like a local corr’s …

The danger of an impotent Assembly

Brian Walker on December 10, 2012, 11:53 pm

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The litany of ritual condemnation in yesterday’s Assembly debate could have been spoken any time during direct rule. There is no hint here of a responsible government trying to get on top of events. Just a wringing of hands in an Assembly, impotent, riddled with its own contradictions, waiting for the trouble to burn itself out. For another night the initiative is surrendered to the streets. No MLA of course shares any measure of responsiblity. Perhaps that’s unfair. Perhaps for the moment …

Take Alliance seriously.They represent what most people want, the politics of compromise

Brian Walker on December 9, 2012, 3:10 pm

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Even to their own supporters the main parties are hardly coming out of the flag disorder looking impressive. When the chips are down the smiling cross community stuff isn’t quite cutting the mustard where it matters most. Nice people pocket the gains – they might even group around a new Northern Ireland, Peter still has a point even if he puts it provocatively. But he and Martin still have to settle with their respective enemies within. The easier bit of power …

Broadcasters’ right to free expression will become more restricted

Brian Walker on December 8, 2012, 12:29 pm

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Here’s a worrying report by Breda O’Brien in the Irish Times which will give RTE and public service broadcasters everywhere a headache. McGuirk, PR consultant and former Libertas communications director (and prolific tweeter himself), recently compiled a list of journalists and producers who tweeted that they were taking part in a pro-choice march, or calling for support for it. He gave up at 37. There were some names associated with RTÉ, and nine from this newspaper (although The Irish Times is …

£132 million extra capital? Who cares, when we can burn down an Alliance office.

Brian Walker on December 6, 2012, 1:24 pm

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With the local news fixed on the deepening flags furore, you have to look quite hard to find anything at all on the impact on NI of the Chancellor’s autumn statement less than 24 hours after he made it. Hey, who cares about public money when there are Alliance offices to burn? As far as I can see the CBI were the only one who made much in print of the unheralded 1% cut in corporation tax to 21% throughout the …

May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast

Brian Walker on December 4, 2012, 11:08 am

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No doubt the flag furore is being debated all day on Radio Ulster which thankfully I haven’t heard, But I was impressed by a calming interview with Gregory Campbell on the Today programme at 7.43 a.m.(Sadly the BBC archive service has declined. We used to be able to access all items separately on the Today running order but this is no longer possible, so you’ll have to move the cursor along on the whole programme recording to find it). However …

Peter Robinson will not win over nationalists with gloating like this

Brian Walker on December 3, 2012, 11:10 am

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I know we’ve taken this subject apart before but blame Peter not me for returning to it. His speech to a home crowd welcoming a softening of political attitudes illustrates perfectly what’s defective in his approach. He is guilty of reducing what could be a tentative change in political attitudes requiring respect and real understanding of difference to the tired old zero sum game between unionism and nationalism. This risks hardening attitudes up all over again. And by failing at least …

Spare us a new long game of political numbers

Brian Walker on November 26, 2012, 2:38 pm

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More clearly than before as Mick observes, it is Peter Robinson’s medium term strategy and perhaps his personal legacy to enlist the support of enough Catholics to preserve the Union. But despite the superficial confidence in Peter’s leader’s speech it is loaded with insecurity. He has been forced to recognise the likelihood of an eventual Catholic majority and with it a possible loss of unionist control. While candour in politics is always a good thing, it is unfortunate that he has chosen …

Northern Ireland training ground for new BBC leadership

Brian Walker on November 23, 2012, 3:46 pm

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I was going to headline this: “BBC NI ex News trainee becomes Director General. ” But then nearly all the bright young things in London HQ in the 1970s were blooded (figuratively) in the Belfast newsroom at the height of the Troubles. BBC News and current Affairs was the forcing ground for familiar luminaries Jeremy Paxman, Gavin Esler and Bill Neely ( Spotlight). Among those who enhanced their reputation outside the BBC later were Chris Graham, former head the Advertising …

The NI peace process has lessons for Israel and Hamas

Brian Walker on November 22, 2012, 12:47 pm

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Richard Haass President Bush’s envoy to Northern Ireland and now head of a leading foreign affairs advisory board, has a piece in the Financial Times (£) headlined “Israel should learn from Northern Ireland.” The first lessons are not those touted by the former paramilitaries but those learned by the governments. As he has said before, Haass puts Israel in a roughly equivalent role to that of the British government in the peace process. Israel needs to put Hamas to the test. …

Women bishops – it is about religion, stupid

Brian Walker on November 21, 2012, 9:00 pm

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Does anybody else feel uneasy that the case for women bishops is championed by commentators with a wholly secular agenda and that an essential element of the argument has been deliberately left out? Too hard for our little heads to take in or too silly for words, being about religion? Nothing wrong with the secularists’ case of course. Only there’s no reason why their voices should prevail, as distinct from the great majority of church members in favour of women …

Northern Ireland win:win from summit venue

Brian Walker on November 21, 2012, 12:03 pm

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The choice of the Lough Erne golf resort as next year’s G8 summit venue carries a bold double message. One, that overstretched investment in property need not always be fatal (the venue once worth £30 million is now priced at £10m in administration) . And two, there’s always the familiar one about the exportable peace process. Qualifications and reservations about both messages will rightly be muted in the welcome for the highly imaginative idea that came apparently from David Cameron …

No chance of a Sinn Fein Scotland

Brian Walker on November 21, 2012, 10:30 am

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Jim Gallagher in his days as a civil servant one of the architects of developing Scottish devolution and still a leading authority on the Scottish Question discusses rival scenarios for Scotland’s future in the Scotsman, concentrating on the bottom line issue of control over tax and spend. Either way, whether the outcome is “devo more” as he calls it, or independence, he makes it clear that the English can’t be left out of the Scottish story. The detached reader might …

Why are softer political attitudes failing to transform the political landscape?

Brian Walker on November 19, 2012, 11:33 am

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Two overviews in the Irish Times share the analysis that while the old identity issues will probably be with us always, much of the old animosity is subsiding. It’s always risky when a journalist relies on the feeling in his waters to make a case but Gerry Moriarty ‘s claim rings true, that.. … while these degrees of separation probably always will be with us, the place doesn’t seem as bitter any more. The shades of orange and green seem more muted. …

The principled barbarity that can happen in a “Catholic country”

Brian Walker on November 14, 2012, 11:08 am

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Excellent reporting by Kitty Holland and Paul Cullen in the Irish Times, that is all the more compelling for being dispassionate. Who will raise as voice against such shame? The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day. “Savita was really in …

A view of UK City of Culture from the near abroad

Brian Walker on November 13, 2012, 9:54 am

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It’s heart warming to see the Independent commissioning an essay about UK City of Culture 2013. The piece tells us much about the generation and background of Grainne Maguire, the young writer with a southern background and experience of living in London for whom the north is a strange and alien place. Grainne has real insight about the role of art in “telling what is was really like.” But only the fitfully interested young could believe that for many Bloody …

Wanted: a new John Birt for the BBC

Brian Walker on November 11, 2012, 12:52 pm

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I never thought I’d write this but John Birt is the kind of figure the BBC now needs to steady the ship. In 1987 the BBC faced a similar if slower burning crisis. The DG Alasdair Milne never recovered from the row in 1985 over Real Lives: On the Edge of the Union, a network documentary that depicted the then Derry IRA boss Martin McGuinness not as a red in tooth and claw monster but as a man capable of …

The sad tale of tolerating torture that hangs over us today

Brian Walker on October 29, 2012, 10:05 am

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Ian Cobain a senior reporter on the Guardian is on Radio 4’s Start the Week ( listen on BBCiPlayer or RadioPlayer after 10 a.m. or the repeat at 2100 live tonight). I strongly recommend a listen. The author of Cruel Britannia: a secret history of British torture, he gives a calm and convincing account of how torture techniques were introduced in the colonies after WW2 and applied at the beginning of internment in Northern Ireland in 1971. . Cobain is …